Demonstrators carry a model of a prison cell containing the cut-out figure of Russia’s prime minister Vladimir Putin and president Dmitry Medvedev with a sign reading “[Convicted] for the usurpation of power” during an anti-Putin rally in central St. Petersburg on Feb. 4.示威群眾二月四日在聖彼得堡市中心的反普廷遊行中，拿著一個內裝俄羅斯總理弗拉吉米爾‧普廷與總統德米崔‧麥維德夫的人像剪紙與寫有「篡奪權力有罪」標語的監獄模型。

Photo: AFP照片：法新社

Russian authorities sought to deter activists from turning up at a rally against Vladimir Putin’s rule, with the church calling on them to pray instead and the chief doctor urging them to stay home due to cold weather.

Tens of thousands on Feb. 4 marched through Moscow to a square just over the Moscow river from the Kremlin to protest Putin’s grip on Russia, exactly one month before he stands in presidential polls on March 4.

After much haggling the Moscow city hall has allowed opposition activists to go ahead with the march and subsequent rally, the opposition movement’s third major protest since fraud-tainted December parliamentary elections.

The head of Russia’s Orthodox Church, which has been watching opposition calls to take to the streets to demand fair elections with growing unease, called on the faithful to eschew rowdy demonstrations for a peaceful prayer.

“Orthodox Christians don’t know how to take to the streets,” Russian Orthodox Patriarch Kirill said in an address to Russians.

“But they are taking to heart what is happening today to our people, drawing in their mind clear historic parallels with the turpitude and forgetfulness of pre-revolutionary years, with disorder, chaos and the destruction of the country in the 1990s.”